For all the reforms made by parliament in the wake of MPs' expenses, trying to see who is really influencing our politicians is often like staring through fog: look for long enough, and a fuzzy picture might emerge, but nothing too clear.

Political donors, diners and sponsors are recorded across a series of registers. Those who donate or lend to parties are recorded on the register of political donations, held by the Electoral Commission.

The system works well enough for anyone wanting to check up on an individual MP or civil servant – if they are willing to trawl six registers – but if someone wants to see all of Fujitsu's interactions with politicians, for example, there's nowhere to look.

The new data techniques used in this Guardian investigation begin to tackle the problem: using a automated script coded by ScraperWiki, all the separate all-party register entries are pulled into one document, so the data can be analysed to give a fuller picture.

But until the government routinely publishes its information in a clear and open way, the public will still be squinting at lobbying from afar, straining to make out what they can.

The new information reveals a lot, though: seventy people directly benefit from lobby passes issued by all party groups. More than £1.6m is donated by outside interests each year, and at least 45 groups are managed by professional public affair companies.

We can also see that new politics looks similar to the old: 207 out of the 232 new MPs at the last election are qualifying members of at least one Parliamentary group.

That's some of the highlights – but the data is below. What else can you see?